Accessibility Statement

Here at the Office for National Statistics we take website accessibility very seriously. We are committed to making our website accessible and easy to use for everyone. We’ve already taken action

We offer three different viewing options. There is the Default option, then a Dyslexic option and a High Visibility option.

We now have a skip to content navigation system which can be used with a screen reader or by tabbing a keyboard.

We’ve implemented an “apply selected filters option to all the search pages.” Previously each time the user selected a checkbox as a filter, tha page would change and refresh causing confusion to screen reader users.

Buttons have now been clearly labeled to avoid ambiguity for screen readers.

We are also working closely with the website accessibility experts at the Shaw Trust to make further improvements.

We’ve drawn up an action plan which includes making transcripts available for our videos. We are in the process of improving the subtitles on all our videos and making our transcripts more descriptive.

At the Office for National Statistics we strive to make our website accessible and easy to use for everyone.

If you experience any problems with accessibility, or if you have any suggestions for improvement, please let us know and we’ll do our best to make things better.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) is committed to ensuring that this website is accessible to the widest range of people possible. All visitors to the ONS website should be able to access data, publications, summary information, methodological information relating to statistics and corporate information.

The website aims to ensure accessibility via recognised guidelines or techniques known to assure accessibility (such as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG); see 7.1.1.1) to a wide range of audiences without the need for special adaptation, other than the use of assistive technologies.

Help using this website

This site offers three different viewing schemes, accessed by the controls in the banner at the top of each page. These controls are visually represented as three boxes with the letter A or with the following descriptions:Default scheme,
Dyslexia scheme, High visibility scheme.

Free assistive technologies should be available on most browsers. Using the Accessibility link, usually found within the Accessories section of a browser’s program menu, it should be possible to access a magnifier, narrator and on-screen keyboard.

Depending on which browser you are using, you can access a number of other features to help you access material online more easily. For the latest information visit the BBC’s My Web My Way

ONS’s commitment to
accessibility

ONS has recently been recognised for its commitment to disabled people (whether they are employees, customers or other stakeholders), becoming the first public sector organisation to have achieved the Gold status on the Disability Standard.

Some of the changes we have made have contributed to this award. These included the implementation of a fully functioning ‘Skip to content’ navigation. This can now be accessed by people using a keyboard or a screen reader.

An ‘Apply selected filters’ button has been included on all search pages. Previously, each time a user selected a checkbox as a filter, the page would change and refresh causing issues for keyboard only users and screen readers. It could be irritating for all users as it would take some time to change a number of filters. The introduction of the ‘Apply selected filters’ button has resolved this issue.

We have ensured that we now have transcripts for all infographics. We want to make sure that all transcripts are descriptive, including any humour that might be included in our videos. This is to give all our users the same experience. We have also updated all of our ONS YouTube videos to ensure subtitles are accurate and meaningful.

ONS has an on-going commitment to testing as we are developing an in-house usability testing laboratory and will be incorporating accessibility testing into all future website updates.

Accessibility limitations

Although we have tried to ensure this site is accessible, you may find some limitations. While we always aim to communicate in clear and simple language this is not always possible. Due to the nature of the site, some content may be technical and may require technical understanding.

This website includes a large body of legacy content that was migrated from the previous ONS website. This content is not all accessible to the WCAG v1.0 double-A standard and making all of this content retrospectively accessible would not be an effective use of our resources.

In a small number of instances, people navigating the ONS website using a keyboard may find that the cursor becomes trapped within an interactive map, preventing them from moving on to other content.

We will endeavour to ensure that PDFs included on the website are as accessible as possible. Where possible, PDF documents will include an HTML alternative. Some legacy content however, will not have an alternative version. We are currently updating our standards to ensure all new PDFs on the ONS website are accessible to all.

From an accessibility perspective, file type and size should be included for PDF documents. For automatically generated PDFs, this information is not displayed. These PDF documents can be found when viewing many statistical bulletins. When viewing the bulletin in an HTML format, there is an option to download an automatically created PDF.

ONS will occasionally use ways of presenting data and analysis online that are not accessible to the WCAG v1.0 double-A standard in order to aid interpretation and enhance accessibility for some groups of users. When we do this, we will take all possible steps to ensure that an alternative version is made available in an accessible format. Examples of this might include providing a transcript for video or audio content or providing a data download to provide the data used in an animated presentation.

Browser compatibility

People navigating the ONS website using a keyboard in Internet Explorer may have an issue with the visual cue when using the tab function. We hope to resolve this issue soon. The problem is not applicable to other web browsers.

Due to problems with some web browsers, the ‘Skip to content’ function may not work as expected. At times, although the function may take you to the page content, the cursor will not navigate to this content.

Some interactive aspects of the ONS website have been produced using Flash content. This content will not be accessible to all users.

Ways of contacting us

If you need help finding our statistics, or have any suggestions, comments or complaints regarding the accessibility of this site, please contact us.